Melissa Pritchard BA (Hons) Fine Art
My practice is multidisciplinary, incorporating installation, performance, and animation that establishes itself around experimental narratives. I explore themes such as the hierarchies between different expressions of identities, and how we absorb cultural teachings as children. I play with qualities that traditionally surround the feminine and childhood. Questioning how certain tropes associated with the feminine or childhood, are seen as frivolous or taken less seriously. I’m interested in repurposing stereotypes and using understood imagery, to illustrate how cultural beliefs and knowledge are a subconscious part of our understanding. My work draws from theatre and stage design to create other-worldly installations and performance spaces. I create staged environments that play with element of 2d, 3d, video and performance. My work explores the boundaries between fact, fiction and myth. Blurring the lines between these realities, to create a place that’s able to mock and de-construct cultural normalities. Fairy tales are a huge inspiration for my narratives. As they were used to spread concepts and inspire hope. Fairy tales traditionally got away with direct criticisms of societal factors, otherwise unable to be tackled in other forms. As they create a disregard for logic with its soft-hearted and seductive imagery, that camouflages harsh truths. Furthermore, it’s strong roots in nomadic, oral traditions allowed for continuous development to fit its environment at every telling. I wish to reawaken the genre of fairy tales to it original state of ever changing and always searching for a better future.
